03/31/2013

Fake Bullies, Real Bullies

I noticed that there was one of those "promoted tweets" showing up in my feed from something called @meanstinks.

This account with its more than 26,000 followers isn't something you might figure out right away, but it's basically a marketing campaign by Secret deodorant against bullying -- sort of a public service campaign.

Since launching the "Mean Stinks" program, which has also included a
publicity tie-in with "Glee's" Amber Riley and an iAd campaign launched
last month, Secret's already strong sales growth kicked up a notch. The
brand had momentum anyway, with a current streak of 17 consecutive
quarters of share growth, according to P&G. Sales are up 8% to
around $250 million in channels tracked by SymphonyIRI for the 52 weeks
ended July 10, but they're up an even faster 9% for the 26 weeks ended
June 26, a period affected by the "Mean Stinks" campaign that launched
in January on Facebook. Secret, already the leading U.S. deodorant, saw
its share rise 0.6 points for the past 52 weeks and 0.7 points for the
first half of 2011.

So...social media "engagement," even encouraging people to give $1 to an anti-bullying charity -- is really about improvement of the bottom line.

I find this creepy. And remember, I'm not the socialist around here, I don't hate corporations or business. It reminds me of humdog's famous article "Pandora's Vox" which I critiqued as being too anti-capitalist at the time -- from her first days at the Well, she chronicled how all of us online personas were being milked for all our thoughts and hopes and dreams to be exploited in marketing campaigns.... I guess I had never thought of how bad it could get, even though I remain a supporter of capitalism and think overall, Carmen (Montserrat Tovar in Second Life) was too socialist...although she came back to her religion towards the end of her life...

In any event, I don't like the anti-bullying campaigns because they are too vague, too shallow, and too baggy -- they can apply to almost anything anywhere. When bullies are everywhere, they are nowhere. Often, "bullying" seems to mean something about hating gays -- but then that means if you question anything about the way that some aggressive gay activists are pursuing their cause by boycotting or trying to silence other groups they don't like, why, you're the "bully" then -- even if what they do would be classified as bullying in anyone else's hands.

Sometimes bullying is about somebody being "different" in school -- but it's a sliding concept that can differ from state to state or situation to situation -- whatever someone decides who can get the news media -- and more importantly, social media -- on it. Sometimes it's really serious, cases culminating in suicide - horrible situations. Other times it seems to erode the significance of the need to fight such serious cases by being merely something "mean" said on Facebook. If bullying is everything from humiliating a rape victim to causing somebody to commit suicide, to causing somebody to get their feelings hurt because of a failure to like something on Facebook -- how can we combat it? We can't -- we can only helplessly fall into the hands of managers who will be sure to follow every twist and turn of the party line on this matter...

These campaigns and their witless boosters on social media are awfully manipulative and shallow and stupid. I see the campaigns as kind of an open source meme that are now being both exploited by corporations (like Procter & Gamble) to use in faux "public interest" campaigns that are merely sales campaigns, and also exploited by the counterculturalists like Anonymous, which makes much of "bullies" now in their own reputational laundering exercises. (If you ever wanted a really good definition of online bully, you'd have no further to look than 4chan and the behaviour of all the creeps like Weev -- and yet recently with the Steubenville #JusticeSec campaign, Anonymous was pretending they lead the charge against "bullies" -- which can include anyone who criticizes their past or present vigilantism.)

To Anonymous, and to Procter & Gamble (and they are symbiotic), everybody is a victim of a "bully". There are bullies everywhere! The P&G account @meanstinks claims there are 2.1 million bullies in America (!), and that's where I had to ask: but where do you get those numbers?

I never got an answer, although somebody said "Parent Magazine" -- like that's a source?!

There are about 100,000 public schools in American, and about 33,000 private schools. So that would make 15 bullies per school! One of those scant-looking new accounts with few followers -- those accounts you suspect are made by the gadzillions by the propagandists who run these campaigns from either P&G or Anonymous -- said "that number is low". I tried to think of every school I'd ever been in myself, or where my children or relatives have been in. I just couldn't concede that each of these schools had "fifteen bullies".

So...nonsense. The number is ridiculous, ill-defined, and it's all stupid. Who are these bullies? People who don't get with either the totalitarian Anonymous program or the ad agency's superficial campaign to sell deodorant?

It would be better if people could identify more the behaviour or methods of bullying -- you know, what Anonymous and Adria Rich had in common in last week's scandal -- than decide certain people are to be labelled as "bullies" and then ostracized "from the community" (which is bullying itself).

I knew it would take only about 6 tweets before these anonymous and unaccountable personas would lable me a bully merely because I questioned these crazy numbers -- and the entire craze of making kids feel like they are victims and have to fight these mysterious armies of 2.1 bullies who exist because the figures of authority in their world don't do their jobs? Or? Are afraid of lawsuits if they do more than tell the little darlings they have to "use words"?

One person attacking me because I questioned the meme campaign had an account with a name like "QueerFlag" or something and claimed that there was "hetereosexual apartheid" in America because not everyone was getting behind the lastest campaign for gay rights. After a few rounds, I didn't hesitate to identify this person as a loon, because we're in a huge tide in fact that is finding more support for gay marriage and gay marriage rights in many states and the issue is even being examined now by the Supreme Court. Regardless of this or that temporary loss of the battle for equal rights, it has turned a corner.

Yet talking in terms of "apartheid" is just crazy -- there is no such thing. Get a grip. Look at Syria. Realize you are not in some oppressed hell. No one has stopped you from doing whatever you want -- you're hysterically fantasizing about oppression on Twitter because ad agencies and Anonymous are ginning up meme campaigns. Criticizing your crazy notion that there is "heterosexual apartheid" in America isn't "being a bully"; you're the bully for thinking you can put over such arrant nonsense as politically-correct straitjackets we must all don.

Then...Who needs separate nonprofit charities or government agencies when you can have corporations and social media do the work of helping society and making a "Better World"? Says Ad Age:

The Mean Stinks Facebook page also includes a referral page for
counseling centers, some positive video shoutouts from Ms. Riley, a
section where women can upload video apologies or complaints about past
acts of meanness, and a store that sells T-shirts with anti-bullying
messages (along with links promoting F-commerce sales of other Secret and other P&G products).

"We're more than just products and brands, but we're actually doing
something meaningful for our consumers," said P&G spokeswoman Laura
Brinker.

Really, Laura? How are you measuring this? How can we evaluate it?

Part of the meme train is to get people to paint their pinkie fingernails blue. I'm not sure why. "Pinkie promise" is a concept that teenage girls sometimes invoke. Blue -- as in blue jeans -- seems to be the colour of this campaign. Just to be different, I've had all 10 of my toenails painted blue. You can never be too careful....

If you look at the Facebook account, and read some of the tweets, too, you see that middle-aged women still reliving their bullying traumas are as represented as some teens. I've also noticed that a few enterprising and aspiring hip-hop artists have seized the meme train to try to get attention to their videos. I thought this one by Tae Stax had a great name -- Fake Friends, Real Enemies. Don't we all have them! And any one of them could become a bully at any time!!!

Comments

I noticed that there was one of those "promoted tweets" showing up in my feed from something called @meanstinks.

This account with its more than 26,000 followers isn't something you might figure out right away, but it's basically a marketing campaign by Secret deodorant against bullying -- sort of a public service campaign.

Since launching the "Mean Stinks" program, which has also included a
publicity tie-in with "Glee's" Amber Riley and an iAd campaign launched
last month, Secret's already strong sales growth kicked up a notch. The
brand had momentum anyway, with a current streak of 17 consecutive
quarters of share growth, according to P&G. Sales are up 8% to
around $250 million in channels tracked by SymphonyIRI for the 52 weeks
ended July 10, but they're up an even faster 9% for the 26 weeks ended
June 26, a period affected by the "Mean Stinks" campaign that launched
in January on Facebook. Secret, already the leading U.S. deodorant, saw
its share rise 0.6 points for the past 52 weeks and 0.7 points for the
first half of 2011.

So...social media "engagement," even encouraging people to give $1 to an anti-bullying charity -- is really about improvement of the bottom line.

I find this creepy. And remember, I'm not the socialist around here, I don't hate corporations or business. It reminds me of humdog's famous article "Pandora's Vox" which I critiqued as being too anti-capitalist at the time -- from her first days at the Well, she chronicled how all of us online personas were being milked for all our thoughts and hopes and dreams to be exploited in marketing campaigns.... I guess I had never thought of how bad it could get, even though I remain a supporter of capitalism and think overall, Carmen (Montserrat Tovar in Second Life) was too socialist...although she came back to her religion towards the end of her life...

In any event, I don't like the anti-bullying campaigns because they are too vague, too shallow, and too baggy -- they can apply to almost anything anywhere. When bullies are everywhere, they are nowhere. Often, "bullying" seems to mean something about hating gays -- but then that means if you question anything about the way that some aggressive gay activists are pursuing their cause by boycotting or trying to silence other groups they don't like, why, you're the "bully" then -- even if what they do would be classified as bullying in anyone else's hands.

Sometimes bullying is about somebody being "different" in school -- but it's a sliding concept that can differ from state to state or situation to situation -- whatever someone decides who can get the news media -- and more importantly, social media -- on it. Sometimes it's really serious, cases culminating in suicide - horrible situations. Other times it seems to erode the significance of the need to fight such serious cases by being merely something "mean" said on Facebook. If bullying is everything from humiliating a rape victim to causing somebody to commit suicide, to causing somebody to get their feelings hurt because of a failure to like something on Facebook -- how can we combat it? We can't -- we can only helplessly fall into the hands of managers who will be sure to follow every twist and turn of the party line on this matter...

These campaigns and their witless boosters on social media are awfully manipulative and shallow and stupid. I see the campaigns as kind of an open source meme that are now being both exploited by corporations (like Procter & Gamble) to use in faux "public interest" campaigns that are merely sales campaigns, and also exploited by the counterculturalists like Anonymous, which makes much of "bullies" now in their own reputational laundering exercises. (If you ever wanted a really good definition of online bully, you'd have no further to look than 4chan and the behaviour of all the creeps like Weev -- and yet recently with the Steubenville #JusticeSec campaign, Anonymous was pretending they lead the charge against "bullies" -- which can include anyone who criticizes their past or present vigilantism.)

To Anonymous, and to Procter & Gamble (and they are symbiotic), everybody is a victim of a "bully". There are bullies everywhere! The P&G account @meanstinks claims there are 2.1 million bullies in America (!), and that's where I had to ask: but where do you get those numbers?

I never got an answer, although somebody said "Parent Magazine" -- like that's a source?!

There are about 100,000 public schools in American, and about 33,000 private schools. So that would make 15 bullies per school! One of those scant-looking new accounts with few followers -- those accounts you suspect are made by the gadzillions by the propagandists who run these campaigns from either P&G or Anonymous -- said "that number is low". I tried to think of every school I'd ever been in myself, or where my children or relatives have been in. I just couldn't concede that each of these schools had "fifteen bullies".

So...nonsense. The number is ridiculous, ill-defined, and it's all stupid. Who are these bullies? People who don't get with either the totalitarian Anonymous program or the ad agency's superficial campaign to sell deodorant?

It would be better if people could identify more the behaviour or methods of bullying -- you know, what Anonymous and Adria Rich had in common in last week's scandal -- than decide certain people are to be labelled as "bullies" and then ostracized "from the community" (which is bullying itself).

I knew it would take only about 6 tweets before these anonymous and unaccountable personas would lable me a bully merely because I questioned these crazy numbers -- and the entire craze of making kids feel like they are victims and have to fight these mysterious armies of 2.1 bullies who exist because the figures of authority in their world don't do their jobs? Or? Are afraid of lawsuits if they do more than tell the little darlings they have to "use words"?

One person attacking me because I questioned the meme campaign had an account with a name like "QueerFlag" or something and claimed that there was "hetereosexual apartheid" in America because not everyone was getting behind the lastest campaign for gay rights. After a few rounds, I didn't hesitate to identify this person as a loon, because we're in a huge tide in fact that is finding more support for gay marriage and gay marriage rights in many states and the issue is even being examined now by the Supreme Court. Regardless of this or that temporary loss of the battle for equal rights, it has turned a corner.

Yet talking in terms of "apartheid" is just crazy -- there is no such thing. Get a grip. Look at Syria. Realize you are not in some oppressed hell. No one has stopped you from doing whatever you want -- you're hysterically fantasizing about oppression on Twitter because ad agencies and Anonymous are ginning up meme campaigns. Criticizing your crazy notion that there is "heterosexual apartheid" in America isn't "being a bully"; you're the bully for thinking you can put over such arrant nonsense as politically-correct straitjackets we must all don.

Then...Who needs separate nonprofit charities or government agencies when you can have corporations and social media do the work of helping society and making a "Better World"? Says Ad Age:

The Mean Stinks Facebook page also includes a referral page for
counseling centers, some positive video shoutouts from Ms. Riley, a
section where women can upload video apologies or complaints about past
acts of meanness, and a store that sells T-shirts with anti-bullying
messages (along with links promoting F-commerce sales of other Secret and other P&G products).

"We're more than just products and brands, but we're actually doing
something meaningful for our consumers," said P&G spokeswoman Laura
Brinker.

Really, Laura? How are you measuring this? How can we evaluate it?

Part of the meme train is to get people to paint their pinkie fingernails blue. I'm not sure why. "Pinkie promise" is a concept that teenage girls sometimes invoke. Blue -- as in blue jeans -- seems to be the colour of this campaign. Just to be different, I've had all 10 of my toenails painted blue. You can never be too careful....

If you look at the Facebook account, and read some of the tweets, too, you see that middle-aged women still reliving their bullying traumas are as represented as some teens. I've also noticed that a few enterprising and aspiring hip-hop artists have seized the meme train to try to get attention to their videos. I thought this one by Tae Stax had a great name -- Fake Friends, Real Enemies. Don't we all have them! And any one of them could become a bully at any time!!!